So I'm currently using the "standard" 0/31/10 spec for my Main spec, and 2/31/8 for my Off-Spec, although I tend to stick to my main spec because I like having Divine Guardian to pop for some fights with high AOE damage.

After being away from the game for roughly a month (stopped a day or two after Cata launch and just came back last week), and seeing how the dungeons are, I'm thinking dropping a point of Pursuit of Justice to go 2/2 in Guarded by the Light for that extra shield; I noticed quite a few situations last night in regular Halls of Origination and Grim Batol (my first time in either - luckily it was a Guild run or I probably would have been kicked for that reason alone, unless the community attitude changed a great deal from WOTLK) where I would have died if not for Eternal Glory proccing and giving me a second WoG.

Do you think this would be worth it? Pursuit is nice and all but it doesn't really scream "must-have" talent, while Guarded on the other hand DOES.

Indestructible - Determination that is incorruptible From the other side, a terror to behold - Annihilation will be unavoidable

Why don't you just move 1 point from Reckoning to the second point in GbtL? That way you'll have a standard WoG/raiding spec. I feel Pursuit of Justice is one of those talents that you have it or you don't (like Sacred Duty). Plus, it's a good utility talent as well.

Just putting it out there that the 'standard' build steals a point from Grand Crusader, not Reckoning. Reckoning is a better threat talent than GC point for point and it would make very little sense to take points out of it over GC.

You could flip a coin to pick which one you give up. I currently run 1/2 Reck and 2/2 GC, just because there are enough situations where having AS available earlier is useful, either for extra 3-target damage or for an extra interrupt. Reckoning has the advantage of being better threat per point and triggering more SoI and Weapon enchant procs.

Once 4.0.6 goes live and we get Rebuke, I'll probably go back to 2/2 Reck and 1/2 GC.

Not to mention Reckoning only procs when you're blocking damage, so if you're OT on let's say Cho'gall, Reckoning does lose its value and an unglyphed AS will be more ideal for Conversion and Tentacles.

I will probably drop GC too once we get Rebuke for 2/2 Reckoning when I'm MTing, but wouldn't 1/2 in SotP be more threat/dps than 1/2 GC (SoT is recieving a buff in 4.0.6, but I doubt SotP will stronger Rule of Law or Reckoning)?

SotP does nothing if you're using Seal of Insight. Grand Crusader has the advantage of providing DPS regardless of seal or rotation choice. For WoG rotations, I wouldn't be surprised if it's even better point-for-point than Reckoning, because you can safely prioritize AS over Judgement. And there's also the added benefit GC brings to AoE situations to consider.

Can you also use that logic to say "Sacred Duty does nothing if you're using Word of Glory"? Even though threat is a joke after the 30 seconds mark and is manageable, without SoT, threat of other DPS players will slowly creep up. I'm starting to realize a pattern of if I keep SoT up throughout the fight, I would never have to use SotR again past the 30 seconds mark so I can always use WoG. However, if I switch to SoI after the first 30 seconds, Omen will show that other players' threat is slowly creeping up and you have to use your 3 Holy Powers on SotR instead of self healing.

My point of contention is: using SoT without switching to SoI will allow you WoG all the time after 30 seconds while switching to SoI requires you to waste 3 holy powers on SotR to push back the 2nd highest threat lead later down the road when your TPS drops without SoT.

theckhd wrote:Grand Crusader has the advantage of providing DPS regardless of seal or rotation choice. For WoG rotations, I wouldn't be surprised if it's even better point-for-point than Reckoning, because you can safely prioritize AS over Judgement. And there's also the added benefit GC brings to AoE situations to consider.

I've been thinking that too. Perhaps a new rotation is in order, but more testing will tell. Dust off your MATLAB Theck!

Can you also use that logic to say "Sacred Duty does nothing if you're using Word of Glory"?

Sure, if you want to. I still use SotR on the pull though, and intermittently during the fight when it makes sense (EG proc while at full health, target switches, some burn phases, just to give a few examples). Your choices for those points are still pretty limited though - you can only move them to other threat talents, none of which are much more attractive for SoI/WoG tanking.

Gaxby wrote:Even though threat is a joke after the 30 seconds mark and is manageable, without SoT, threat of other DPS players will slowly creep up. I'm starting to realize a pattern of if I keep SoT up throughout the fight, I would never have to use SotR again past the 30 seconds mark so I can always use WoG. However, if I switch to SoI after the first 30 seconds, Omen will show that other players' threat is slowly creeping up and you have to use your 3 Holy Powers on SotR instead of self healing.

My point of contention is: using SoT without switching to SoI will allow you WoG all the time after 30 seconds while switching to SoI requires you to waste 3 holy powers on SotR to push back the 2nd highest threat lead later down the road when your TPS drops without SoT.

I haven't observed this to be the case. In most cases I've actually been starting the fight with SoI and switching to WoG after ~30 seconds, and still haven't had threat problems.

Gaxby wrote:I've been thinking that too. Perhaps a new rotation is in order, but more testing will tell. Dust off your MATLAB Theck!

"Dust off" would imply that I haven't been working on it continuously for the last 3 weeks....

theckhd wrote:"Dust off" would imply that I haven't been working on it continuously for the last 3 weeks....

theckhd wrote:NOT YET UPDATED FOR 4.0.3a @ 85AoE Rotation Simulations

I'm just toying with you at this point.

Perhaps I'm being too vague on the term "threat problems". Here's a more descriptive analysis:

After the first 30 seconds, I usually get 3 SotR on the boss (I have to press SotR again whenever I miss). At this point, the next highest threat on Omen is at 50%, so I have a very comfortable threat lead. So for "x" slot during my 4th set of 939 I turn on SoI (so I don't delay on HoPo generation) and proceed with the WoG auto-pilot spamming for every 3 HoPo dump. Once I do this, the 2nd highest threat starts slowly creeping up from 50% to 60% to 70%, etc.

Eventually, the 2nd highest threat player will reach 90% to 95% if I continue with SoI and WoG. So when it reaches 90% is what I call the "threat problem" (perhaps a little threat paranoia). I need to regain my "comfortable" threat lead so that the DPS don't pull off me, so I can either:

1) Switch back to SoT2) Start using SotR3) Do both

Perhaps I misunderstand when you say "switch to WoG" as in only use WoG and never use SotR ever again after the first 30 seconds. You did say you still use SotR periodically even after the first 30 seconds and that's must where Sacred Duty still has some merit where SotP does not. Perhaps not going on WoG auto-pilot and having a good balance of WoG and SotR is what's maintaining the threat lead without having to resort to SoT (therefore invaliding the talent SotP).

If I can get a good grasp of using mixing some SotR with WoG while SoI is active, 2/2 Sacred Duty and 0/2 SotP would make very much sense. Am I correct? I presume you don't switch back and forth between SoT and SoI many times and sorely rely on SotR for threat stability despite having SoI on throughout the fight past 30 seconds.

This sounds like the problem has a different source, to be honest. Are we talking about a situation with nearly full Vengeance (i.e. raid boss), or low Vengeance (i.e. heroic 5-mans)?

At low Veng., the symptoms you describe are very likely; for 5-mans I generally use SoT as a result (even though I use SoI/WoG glyphs). At high Veng., it all becomes irrelevant past the first 30 seconds or so, and I can use SoI/WoG exclusively without any threat concerns. In fact, most of the time I've just been starting fights with SoI.

The threat difference between SotR and WoG is unlikely to be a relevant issue. I've been adding self-healing threat to the MATLAB model, and I was a bit surprised by the result:

This is with all glyphs, so it assumes you have SotR/WoG glyphed, and gives you the SoT or SoI benefit based on which seal is active. It's also the average threat of a single cast of the ability (including hit/crit, but ignoring Sacred Duty and seal procs). The raw point values at 100% vengeance are ~27k WoG (non-crit, before glyphs) and ~21k raw SotR damage (non-crit, before glyphs).

So if you're running SoI with SotR/WoG/SoI glyphs, a Word of Glory causes around 50k threat, while SotR causes around 52k. You also get about 23% extra WoGs thanks to Eternal Glory, and roughly 36% extra SotR damage from SD procs if you're following the usual rotation.

We're ignoring a bunch of factors here (WoG can't miss, but has overheal, and the extra WoG costs a GCD; SotR can miss, but can be recast immediately, which also costs a GCD) that are better addressed with the priority simulation code. But it should be enough to demonstrate that the threat difference between WoG and SotR isn't as significant as many of us thought it was.

I'd be more inclined to believe that the threat problems you're describing are due to rotation, latency, or something else we haven't thought of. If you have a parse somewhere, link it and I or one of the other parse-dissection experts can take a look and see if we can find anything.

Are you taking into account that healing threat is spread out amongst all the mobs within aggro range? Unless that has changed (and it may have, I haven't really been keeping track of it), it could make a larger threat difference on fights with adds.

Also, if you were going to take the point from PoJ... why wouldn't you just remove both points, use a speed enchant, and put the extra point somewhere else?

Skye1013 wrote:Are you taking into account that healing threat is spread out amongst all the mobs within aggro range? Unless that has changed (and it may have, I haven't really been keeping track of it), it could make a larger threat difference on fights with adds.

No, that's against a single target. On a fight with multiple targets, the threat would still be split. And of course, overheal will reduce the total amount of threat before division as well.

theckhd wrote:This sounds like the problem has a different source, to be honest. Are we talking about a situation with nearly full Vengeance (i.e. raid boss), or low Vengeance (i.e. heroic 5-mans)?

At low Veng., the symptoms you describe are very likely; for 5-mans I generally use SoT as a result (even though I use SoI/WoG glyphs). At high Veng., it all becomes irrelevant past the first 30 seconds or so, and I can use SoI/WoG exclusively without any threat concerns. In fact, most of the time I've just been starting fights with SoI.

I'm talking about Raid Bosses of course. No one gives a shit about server-first Heroic Deadmines, right?

For some reason I'm at 170k with Kings (190k with Raid buffs including the +120 Stamina from Mixology cause I'm an Alchemist), but my Vengeance Status Bar only goes up to 13k Attack Power. Anyway, I've noticed that I may be using my Cooldowns too liberally early on in the fight and that's probably why I can't build up my Vengeance fast/quick/high enough. Maybe on Halfus that has some merit, but on non-healing intensive fights like Maloriak, I have a habit of using them as soon as they're available because I don't really use them until phase 2.

Perhaps I should try and wait until I build up my Vengeance up to a certain point (70% sounds good?) before I switch to WoG/SoI. Maybe the 30 seconds rule isn't enough and I need to watch my Vengeance level more to decide when to switch. But of course they're are some fights that require tank swaps and phase changes where I can't even get to 50%.

Finally, I'm curious of how Latency has to do with all this? If I'm spamming my hot-keys while paying attention to Quartz's GCD timer, does it still affect my threat?

Gaxby wrote:I'm talking about Raid Bosses of course. No one gives a shit about server-first Heroic Deadmines, right?

Touché, good sir.

Gaxby wrote:For some reason I'm at 170k with Kings (190k with Raid buffs including the +120 Stamina from Mixology cause I'm an Alchemist), but my Vengeance Status Bar only goes up to 13k Attack Power.

Remember that Vengeance is based on 100% of your stamina, not 10% of your hit points. There was a blue post clarifying that a few weeks ago. Before the change to 14 HP/stam, those two were equivalent, but when they buffed the HP/stam coefficient they reworked Vengeance to keep tank threat output balanced.

Gaxby wrote:Anyway, I've noticed that I may be using my Cooldowns too liberally early on in the fight and that's probably why I can't build up my Vengeance fast/quick/high enough. Maybe on Halfus that has some merit, but on non-healing intensive fights like Maloriak, I have a habit of using them as soon as they're available because I don't really use them until phase 2.

Perhaps I should try and wait until I build up my Vengeance up to a certain point (70% sounds good?) before I switch to WoG/SoI. Maybe the 30 seconds rule isn't enough and I need to watch my Vengeance level more to decide when to switch. But of course they're are some fights that require tank swaps and phase changes where I can't even get to 50%.

I'm not sure what to tell you here, that could potentially be an issue. I pop GAnK on the Halfus pull, but I also tank Time Warden + Whelps (+Halfus later on, with other cooldowns running), so Vengeance stacks very quickly anyway. On most other fights, I don't pop any damage reduction cooldowns on the pull.

For example, on Nef/Ony, I tank Ony at the start, with all DPS popping cooldowns on her. I get a tricks and a misdirect, but other than that I'm on my own. I use SoI the entire fight, even on the pull. The pull is usually DP, Inq while parachute-cloaking off the edge, AW+AS, J, and usually she reaches me just as I land and the GCD is up for CS. Then I just follow standard 939: CS-Cons-CS-HW-CS-SotR-939. I usually go with SotR for the first few finishers to establish my threat lead, and then switch to WoG. Since Ony DPS is relevant, I'll generally try and be careful with Holy Power during that fight, so I'll SotR when it's "safe" just to help get her down quicker.

Unfortunately, I didn't upload a log for last night, but I'll try and sift through some of mine to find a good example of my usual pull.

Gaxby wrote:Finally, I'm curious of how Latency has to do with all this? If I'm spamming my hot-keys while paying attention to Quartz's GCD timer, does it still affect my threat?

Pressing your next key during the latency window is the only way to ensure a seamless rotation. It won't make a huge difference, but I'd estimate that you can see fluctuations of 5-10% of your total output just based on that level of efficiency. If you're not hitting your button till the GCD is up, you're incurring dead time between casts, which in some cases could be several hundred milliseconds per GCD.

if you're running in to latency issues, you can also enable/increase the wow custom latency tolerance function that allows you to queue up you next ability.

personally a dropped pursuit for SotP. Running with a second tankadin using WoG/SoI setup, Seal of Truth did almost 900k more damage over one boss fight (600k censure 290k in direct seal of truth damage) though the miss rate was 12.5% vs 2.6% as well. has anyone sim'ed seal twisting?

You'd lose TPS by seal twisting, and quite a lot of it. Our rotation has no empty gcds (bar one every other pope's death) so by just changing seal you are losing TPS. SoT hits also do more damage than SoR anyway, so I don't see why you would want to change seal.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Love the info here. Picked up on a few things. To me PoJ is a all or nothing talent and something I just have to have. Before Cata hit and we couldn't get into the ret tree I felt oddly unpaladin. I know this info isn't helpful to threat or builds but you can get a boot enchant that will do what 1/2 will do so mine as well go that route if you have to get rid of it.